Custom and Myth eBook

many wells, and found no water, on the indications
of a rod in the hands of the Prieur de Dorenic, near
Guise. In 1700 a cure, near Toulouse, used the
wand to answer questions, which, like planchette,
it often answered wrong. The great sourcier,
or water-finder, of the eighteenth century was one
Bleton. He declared that the rod was a mere
index, and that physical sensations of the searcher
communicated themselves to the wand. This is
the reverse of the African theory, that the stick
is inspired, while the men who hold it are only influenced
by the stick. On the whole, Bleton’s idea
seems the less absurd, but Bleton himself often failed
when watched with scientific care by the incredulous.
Paramelle, who wrote on methods of discovering wells,
in 1856, came to the conclusion that the wand turns
in the hands of certain individuals of peculiar temperament,
and that it is very much a matter of chance whether
there are, or are not, wells in the places where it
turns.

On the whole, the evidence for the turning of the
wand is a shade better than that for the magical turning
of tables. If there are no phenomena of this
sort at all, it is remarkable that the belief in them
is so widely diffused. But if the phenomena
are purely subjective, owing to the conscious or unconscious
action of nervous patients, then they are precisely
of the sort which the cunning medicine-man observes,
and makes his profit out of, even in the earliest
stages of society. Once introduced, these practices
never die out among the conservative and unprogressive
class of peasants; and, every now and then, they attract
the curiosity of philosophers, or win the belief of
the credulous among the educated classes. Then
comes, as we have lately seen, a revival of ancient
superstition. For it were as easy to pluck the
comet out of the sky by the tail, as to eradicate
superstition from the mind of man.

Perhaps one good word may be said for the divining
rod. Considering the chances it has enjoyed,
the rod has done less mischief than might have been
expected. It might very well have become, in
Europe, as in Asia and Africa, a kind of ordeal, or
method of searching for and trying malefactors.
Men like Jacques Aymar might have played, on a larger
scale, the part of Hopkins, the witch-finder.
Aymar was, indeed, employed by some young men to
point out, by help of the wand, the houses of ladies
who had been more frail than faithful. But at
the end of the seventeenth century in France, this
research was not regarded with favour, and put the
final touch on the discomfiture of Aymar. So
far as we know, the hunchback of Lyons was the only
victim of the ‘twig’ who ever suffered
in civilised society. It is true that, in rural
England, the movements of a Bible, suspended like
a pendulum, have been thought to point out the guilty.
But even that evidence is not held good enough to
go to a jury.